“Virtual reality stuff,” Craig said.
“And if you were him, think how tempting it would be to sell what you know, the systems you’ve developed, the classified information for a real VR system, more real than real. Toy and game companies would be in line ten deep to get their hands on your patents. Just imagine, say, Disneyland mass-producing virtual reality chambers like the one in T Program.”
Craig took a big swallow of his thick beer just as the band ceased playing. The silence rang in his ears. He thought of amusement parks, arcades with chambers equivalent to the one Michaelson and Lesserec had developed. Three-dimensional, tactile virtual reality chambers that required no suits, no goggles, just people standing in a room and experiencing the ultimate adventure. Like the Holodeck on Star Trek.
“But the Livermore VR chamber might have killed a man,” Craig said. “What if it’s too real?”
Paige stared at him, and he felt swallowed up in those incredibly blue eyes. “You sure you want to be the guinea pig in the explosives demonstration tomorrow?” she asked. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried, too,” he said. “I’m not stupid. But I think that’s the only way we’re going to catch Lesserec in his games. It’s a risk I have to take.”
Paige set her empty pint glass down on the table. “Drink up, Craig. I need another one.”
He took a too-large swallow, feeling the dark beer burn as it went down. He looked up and stared at the beer bottles swinging on their necktie nooses.
Craig suddenly knew, without a doubt, that he was going to have a hangover when he arrived for the big demonstration in the morning.
CHAPTER 40
“It’s the same philosophy that made NASA so successful during the Apollo days,” said Gary Lesserec, looking down at Craig like a mad doctor about to perform brain surgery on an unanesthetized patient.
Tightening a buckle, he made sure Craig was securely strapped to his motion simulator seat in the VR chamber. “NASA practiced everything so much, ran over so many contingencies, that nothing came as a surprise.” He snorted. “Too bad the space program lost their good luck. Seems they got politics now.”
Craig nodded, but paid little attention, facing away from the redhead. The red-padded chair in the VR chamber stood among a row of others, but Craig would be the only one in here during the high-explosive dress rehearsal. Now that he was buckled in, the only way to get away from Lesserec’s bad breath would be to unstrap and leave.
Paige Mitchell stood at the doorway, arms folded. She watched like a den mother, but she said nothing to Craig.
Lesserec said, “Ready to ride the first nuclear test in nearly a decade?”
Craig turned in his padded seat and looked quizzical. “I thought this was a high explosive test.”
“Right — that’s what I meant,” said Lesserec, almost too quickly. He patted Craig on the shoulder. “Five hundred tons of HE, or a kiloton of nuclear yield equivalent.” Lesserec gave a supercilious grin. “The factor of two difference is due to the percentage of explosive energy that goes into blast and shock versus the radiation yield for a real nuke.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “You wouldn’t understand the difference, but you don’t need to. This dress rehearsal will simulate nearly every aspect of the real thing. That’s why it’s so critical that everything goes right. We’re recording it all. In fact this is going to be our real test. The demonstration for the foreign nationals is just show and tell.”
Craig looked around, flicking his gaze around the dull, featureless chamber. “So what am I supposed to see? Won’t this explosion be over pretty fast?”
Lesserec grinned, freckles and all. “Quicker than you can blink — but that’s the secret of using VR during the explosion. For the real test we’ve got the hole out at the Nevada Test Site just bristling with sensors and humongous data-storage devices. We’ve got new ‘enhancing’ chips in the image processors. Our computers will slow the explosion down by nearly a million times so you’ll ‘see’ the explosion in slow motion. You’ll experience the whole thing on a slow enough timescale it’ll be just like having a God’s eye view.” He sighed. “I envy you the experience, Mr. FBI.”
Craig thought for a moment. “I thought you were going to show this to everyone else anyway?”
Lesserec looked shocked that Craig would even ask the question. “Of course I am. But you get to experience it first. We’ll be processing nearly a thousand times more data than any other simulation we’ve done, so we’re only allowing one person in here at a time — otherwise, even our supercomputers might not be able keep up with all the changing viewing angles, aspect ratios and such.”
Paige called from the doorway. “Good luck, Craig. I’ll be monitoring you outside with the techs.”
Lesserec looked at his wristwatch. “Gotta go. Just be patient. Only about five more minutes to the Big Bang.”
The heavy vault door swung shut; a soft glow oozed out of the walls in a bath of illumination.
Craig grunted as he turned back to the front of the VR chamber. At first the chamber walls had seemed solid, dimpled with round indentations. Now that he had a chance to sit back and wait before the test, he saw that the indentations were actually laser projection lenses, flush with the chamber wall. A breeze from the air-recirculating systems tickled his cheeks. His suitjacket seemed too warm.
Lesserec’s nasal voice came from speakers in the ceiling. “I just checked. They’re about ready out at the test site. Powering up our simulation here. I’ll take you on down the hole, let you sightsee before we begin.”
Before Craig had a chance to answer, the walls around him transformed to rough gray-tan dirt. He found himself in a vertical cave, thirty feet in diameter. Cables and fiberoptic links ran like tentacles down the tunnel wall; small black boxes hung on the cables every five feet or so. Some sort of sensors, he supposed.
The room started descending, and Craig felt a cool, damp breeze waft up from below; a musty smell permeated his senses. My God, he thought, reeling. I can't tell the difference between this simulation and really being in a bore shaft! Craig felt a deepening, grudging respect for the red-headed computer whiz.
Craig looked up and saw distant blackness. Squinting at what must have been an enhanced computer graphic, he thought he could make out a cap to the tunnel; but from what Lesserec had told him earlier, the top was a great distance above him. Some fifty feet below sat a brightly lit canister, which Craig knew should hold the high explosives, though it looked too small to contain tons worth.
The cables from above came together at four junction boxes to the left of the explosive canister. Thickly wound rope and myriad diagnostic cables lay on the bottom of the pit like serpents, spreading out from the device. As his image drew closer to the ground, Craig saw four tunnels that led away from the sealed container of explosives.
“Hello? Can anybody hear me?” he called. “Where do those tunnels go?”
Lesserec’s disembodied voice came from somewhere above and behind the tunnel wall. “They lead to additional sensors and test beds to run shock-wave studies. Some of the tunnels are a quarter mile long so measurements can be made of the radiation yield before the sensors are destroyed.”
Craig’s image settled to the ground with a silent bump. Down one of the tunnels he saw massive steel doors that looked to be a foot thick. Blast doors, he thought. Those must be the explosively driven doors Lesserec told me about. But why so much for the practice run with regular high explosives? These details seemed just like the setup for a real down-hole nuclear test.